Countdown to The Disaster Artist: 6 of the best worst movies ever made

There's just one week to go until the nationwide release of The Disaster Artist, James Franco's terrific movie recounting the making of Tommy Wiseau 'disasterpiece' The Room.

You can check out what Unlimited members thought of the movie right here. In the meantime we thought we'd get in the spirit by rounding up six hilariously bad movies that had us picking our jaws up off the floor, movies that, in their own bizarre way, brought joy to us all.

Plan 9 from Outer Space (1959)

Rotten Tomatoes score: 67%

Don't be fooled by the above RT rating: director Ed Wood's infamously inept sci-fi horror remains for many the high watermark of bad filmmaking, from its wooden acting (including Dracula himself Bela Lugosi) to the wobbly sets and much more.

Wood is often regarded as the worst filmmaker of all time but his legacy was honoured by Tim Burton in 1994 biopic Ed Wood. Rather than sneering at the filmmaker's failures Burton's superb movie (with a career-best performance from Johnny Depp) instead affectionately championed Wood's resolve and commitment to his own vision (no matter how cataclysmic).

Manos: The Hands of Fate (1966)

Rotten Tomatoes score: 7%

Ah, 1966 – the year that brought us cinematic masterpieces like The Good, the Bad and the Ugly and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? It's also the year that inflicted Manos upon the world – seriously, what did we do to deserve this?

The product of director-writer-producer-star Harold P. Warren, this bizarre micro-budget horror centres on a family who find themselves at the mercy of a pagan cult – although really it's the audience who find themselves at the mercy of the abominable technical deficiencies and continuity errors.

The Swarm (1978)

Rotten Tomatoes score: 13%

It's not just fledgling filmmakers who are capable of unleashing a disaster upon us. This all-star killer bee movie (yes, really) sees a whole host of movie legends making utter fools of themselves, among them Michael Caine, Richard Widmark and Olivia de Havilland.

What makes it worse is that director Irwin Allen was renowned throughout the 1970s as the 'master of disaster', the man who brought us classics The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. To call this a comedown is a serious understatement.

Samurai Cop (1989)

Rotten Tomatoes score: It doesn't have one (seriously – we're not making that up)

You know a movie is bad when it doesn't even get registered on RT. This absolute howler is a regular fixture of the Bristol Bad Film Club and will leave viewers poleaxed as to how awful it is.

From its long-haired main star being forced to wear a woman's wig following reshoots to the infamously poor dialogue ("I will bring you his head and place it on your piano"), casual sexism and pound shop action sequences, it takes incompetent filmmaking to a new level.

Interestingly The Room auteur Tommy Wiseau turned up in the eagerly anticipated sequel.

Troll 2 (1990)

Rotten Tomatoes score: 6%

AKA the movie that inspired one of the most notorious and enduring memes of all time.

This cheapo calamity somehow makes the original Troll (hardly Citizen Kane), look like... well, Citizen Kane. The plot defies description, the acting seems less than human and the creature effects... Well, a school panto is likely to have more convincing ones.

Even so it all comes back to the following clip – once seen, you can't unsee it...

Birdemic: Shock and Terror (2010)

Rotten Tomatoes score: 19%

There is indeed shock and terror in this inane Alfred Hitchcock rip-off – although for entirely the wrong reasons.

Pitched as a romantic horror on a budget of less than $10,000 (you can see where this is going), the movie focuses on two lovebirds whose relationship is beset by an attack of feathered fiends. Seriously, upon watching the clip below you'd think this was a feature-length gag designed to test an audience's sense of irony.

Like The Room it's so bad that cult screenings have subsequently emerged, transforming the movie's failings into perverse triumphs.